Disappointment

November 20th, 2005 - 12:11pm

Nintendo has finally caught up with the rest of the world, in that they are offering free wireless hotspots to play games online with their Nintendo DS system. Unlike the US, which has around 15,000 of these hotspots, or Europe/UK which have around 25,000, Nintendo of Australia is offering — get this — 26.

The service went “live” on November 17th. What that meant though, is that — Australia-wide — one hotspot was turned on at Knox Shopping Centre (the reason for it being Knox is because Nintendo’s Australian headquarters are on Stud Rd, about 5 minutes from Knox). So, we get 26 hotspots vs. tens of thousands, and they only bother to turn one on.

I went down to EB on Saturday (19th) to get a copy of Mario Kart DS. Before hitting EB, Justine and I had a drink at Starbucks, which is right around the corner from EB. I turned on Nintendogs and quickly found another person with a dog — I couldn’t see them but Monty had a rollicking good time with “ps”, I’m sure. Shortly after, I went to EB to test out the “special Nintendogs function that allows Nintendogs owners to experience the joys of Bark Mode without having someone else physically there to play with”. Well, that didn’t work at all.

It turns out that EB, K-Mart and one of the Video Games Heaven stores were sold out of Mario Kart DS — the “main” Video Games Heaven had a couple of copies left, which was lucky actually because they were selling it for $60 as opposed to $70 like everyone else.

So, after walking from one end of Knox to the other, I sat back in front of EB, Mario Kart DS in hand, and tried to connect to their wireless setup. Nope, not visible.

After spending 10 minutes in-store, the EB staff member proclaimed that he had no idea why it wasn’t working and supposedly they were “overrun with people yesterday”. I suggested he power cycle the hardware but he told me he wasn’t allowed to touch it.

What a great start to a much-ballyhooed service. Looks like I’ll had to buy a wireless router if I want to play people online, the free hotspots appear to be useless.

It was sort of working, however, as I was able to download a demo of Meteos, which disappeared when I turned off the console, but that wasn’t why I went.

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